Here are my views on various topics which I want to keep for my future reference to compare how have I thought in those days and how I am at present!

Monday, December 24, 2012

Why not Psycho-oncology?

1. Many people think working in cancer setting is not easy and it
requires lot of courage to see the grief of the patients everyday. I can
agree this statement to some extent only.

I see myself as a
tender hearted person and I was afraid to work with special children and
psychiatric patients thinking that there would so much burn out and
things like that.

The truth is “I was also afraid to work in a
cancer setting but my intuition said there is something for me in the
field of Psycho-oncology”. So I joined with courage and I am sure that I
am doing a good job here.

Cancer is no more a deadly disease.
We have got wonderful treatment modalities to save the lives and also
preserve their quality of life. I have treated more than 100 patients
till now. Only 2 patients have died, all others are doing good. I am
happy that I have contributed something when were in so much grief. Most
of my job was ‘alleviating the stigma attached to the word cancer’.

2. Many people have fixed their mind to study Clinical Psychology and did not want to apply for M.Phil Psycho-oncology.

I understand that people who have fixed their mind to Clinical
Psychology want to work in a hospital setting. Psycho-oncology also
makes you work in a hospital setting. Only one difference is ‘In
Clinical Psychology, you would work with Psychiatric Patients and In
Psycho-oncology, you would work with normal people who have become
neurotic because of the trauma’

3. Many other people say they want to work in the field of Counseling Psychology.

Psycho-oncology provides a wide platform to give counseling to the
patients and especially family members starting from adolescent children
to the geriatric population. We do almost all sorts of counseling like
family counseling, marital therapy, adolescent counseling but the only
difference is ‘it is centered upon cancer and its treatment’

4. Few more people say they want to work in Neuro-Psychology.
Here is also a great opportunity for those who want to do something on
Neuro-Psychology. We are doing many researches in the concept called
Chemo-brain. We want to know whether cancer treatment affects the
neuro-psychology of the patients.

5. Finally some more people say they want to work with children.

We have got hundreds of children affected with various types of blood
cancers and most of them have to be in the hospital at least for a year.
We need people who have got some exposure to art and play therapy to
make them ease with the treatment.

In conclusion,
Psycho-oncology has so much scope and you will find your skills
irrespective of your specialization readily helping people here. We also
work on Tobacco Cessation otherwise called Nicotine De-addiction, in
which we do lot of awareness programmes in schools, colleges and
community. Thus if you are interested to work with community and have
good skills in Training, Psycho-oncology is a very apt field.

Kindly disseminate the real scenario of Psycho-oncology and remove the
stigma so that people can make use of the opportunity mentioned above.

Karthik Lakshmanan R M is a Counseling Psychologist and Tobacco Cessation Specialist. He has completed his M.Phil Psycho-oncology specializing in Tobacco Cessation from Cancer Institute(WIA), Adyar, Chennai. He has done his post graduation in Counselling Psychology from Madras School of Social Work, Chennai.﻿

He is now working as an Assistant Professor of Counselling Psychology in Madras School of Social Work.